The Emblemed Jacket
by metacognitive
Summary: Conversations between lost souls. T for language, subject matter.


Title: The Emblemed Jacket  
Character(s): Sodapop Curtis, Laura Hale  
Notes: Crossover whoops. Dates might be off in regards to TW bc honestly when is this show taking place? I'm going off release dates/season 1 clues, since 3b seems to be in 2013 all of a sudden. Conceptually inspired by Lunarblue21's _Badges of Honor_ on ao3, where this is posted under** laratoncita** (which is me :]). There are like two swearwords, so sorry/a warning in advance.

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swish of blade in his back  
**the emblemed jacket** split in half  
ana castillo, "the toltec"

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When the boy—and he is little more than that, really, despite the muscles of his neck and the fading wonder of his eyes—becomes aware of the darkness, it begins to fade. It is not a room he sits in, but a wide space, dim browns and grays the only light that seems to reflect, and he is alone. He reaches out, hoping for a wall, but soon is just wandering in the darkness. It reminds him too much of the nights in Binh Long, when they would take breaks two or three at a time, the rest of the group still on guard. The air was suffocating then, too humid and heavy to be winter back home. Now, though, it's startlingly clear, not even dust swirling before him—not that he would be able to tell, given the lack of any light.

Almost as soon as he thinks that, a yellow light appears, and Sodapop Curtis finds himself in front of a small table with two seats, and in front of him is a woman—because she is one, he can see it in her half-dead eyes, the way her mouth is set in a frown so much like Darry's it hurts—who doesn't look surprised to see him. She has a strong jaw, and dark hair that just barely passes her shoulders. Her mouth curves into a smile when she notices him looking at her, but he's still as confused as ever.

"Sit down," she says, and her voice is higher than he expects.

"What's this?" Soda says instead of sitting down, and just looks at her. She tilts her head, eyebrows raised in amusement.

"Sit down," she says again, "we've got some talking to do."

He frowns, not liking her brushing off of his concerns, and says, "I don't know you. What's goin' on?"

She looks off to the side, and he follows her gaze; there's nothing there. Just more earthy tones, like mud and dirt on brick walls. Like a jungle.

"Like a forest," she says, and then their eyes meet again. He takes a hesitant step forward, keeping her gaze. She's older, he realizes as he sinks into the chair across from her, and her skin looks washed out, tired. She has bags under her eyes, but they look like bruises too. Like someone took a piece of her she can't get back.

"Are ya…?" he starts, but can't get the words out. It's hard to get words out, hard to turn them into sentences that aren't full of longing for home, for wonder about what tomorrow will bring. She laughs.

"I'm dead," she says. Soda feels his stomach drop, the yellow light catching on her features in a way that makes her look skeletal. Nausea hits him when she says, "And you are, too."

Everything goes black for a moment, like the power going out in a rainstorm, but then he blinks, gasps on the too-clear air, and he's sitting at that table again, in the middle of dark nothingness and the girl is still staring at him. She smiles, a little bit kind, a little bit mean, and says, "My name is Laura."

He gapes at her. She continues, unperturbed, "I've been dead since early 2011. Killed in the forest at night." She's still got that smile on her face, but the words are sharper in her mouth; must taste bitter from the way she spits them out.

"I," he says, and shakes himself. Stands up, almost knocking over the chair. He must look wild, he thinks, eyes wide. Like a monster, like a drug-addict. He's seen the boys when they get sent home, sometimes; not everyone is happy, not everyone can function. Ponyboy tells him—told him? No, no that's not it—Steve came back like that. Steve, who enlisted right after Soda got drafted, who was supposed to be working with the machines and ended up hit in the stomach not even a year into it. He's fine, messed up but alive.

And Soda. Soda's dead, apparently.

"No," he tells her, and she just looks up at him like it's nothing. For the first time in his life he wants to hit someone for no reason other than to rile them up, too. And it's a woman, dear God, what is—"No," he says again, "no, ya can't—that's not—but I only got three _months_ left,—no, ya don't—who _are _ya?!"

But she doesn't say anything. Soda breathes heavily for a moment, still staring at her, and then he turns. Sprints into the darkness. He runs for what must be miles, what feels like forever, seconds spanning into minutes into maybe half hour at most. He slows to a walk, and when he turns around he can see the light not ten yards from where he is. He starts to cry.

"No," he manages, and staggers back to her. She stands up when he finally steps into the light, leaning onto the table for support. The wood is smooth beneath his hands, calloused though they are. "What," he says, "what _is_ this?"

The girl—woman—Laura—shrugs. She's got to be in her twenties, Soda decides, and then he takes a long look at her. A shiver goes down his spine as he finally realizes what's going on around him. Her clothes are ripped, jagged; there's what looks like fresh blood on the tattered remains of her shirt, half exposing her collarbone. He looks from her face to her neck and feels the nausea bubbling again, her neck rusted with caked blood. "What…what killed ya?" he says, voice hoarse, and she shrugs. Soda gags, then, the movement having cracked the scabbing of her skin, and she starts to laugh at him.

"My uncle," she says, and her teeth are too sharp when she opens her mouth, her tongue to bright. "Maybe I deserved it," she says after, "but if I ever get to him again I'll kill him. Kill him like I should have killed—" and she cuts herself off. Her eyes glance to the table half-between them, and she says, "Let's sit down," and Soda doesn't know what to do besides obey.

"Do you know what happened to you?" she asks him, and he sees the similarities to Darry end. She's almost like the Social Services agents that would come to talk to them; they would ask questions meant to carry emotion, but the passion would never be in their voices. The words would just fall flat, too monotone to really cause anything but nervousness. But her voice doesn't carry the cruelty Soda always thought he heard in the State's workers, just a sense of resignation. She's tired, he realizes, eyeing the bruising around her eyes, even if he's not quite sure of what.

"No," he says, and she watches him closely. It's almost like she can tell if he's lying, which he _isn't_. "I was," and he pauses. Looks at her again, wonders who she's left behind, before he tells her, "I was in 'Nam," and she nods.

"What do you remember?" she says, and he answers, "Nothin'." She frowns, reminding him of Darry all over again, of Ponyboy, of—_God_—everything, of the gang and that night and Dally and Johnny and Sandy and that _damned_ notice, of home and the DX and it hurts so badly he can't breathe. Can't take a breath of the air he doesn't even need anymore, choking on the painfully clean air and wanted to shout and run for another hour, even if it'll get him nowhere.

"I'm _dead_," he says, desperately, the word tinged like a question, and then it hits him; not just that he's dead, but why, too. The dead of night, and an attack, and gunfire and shouts and Jimmy-G next to him, bleeding from where the bullet grazed his arm as Soda jumped on top of him, staring with those crazy blue eyes of his, electric as they were, and saying, "Curtis, shit, no, Curtis, why did you—" while Soda claws at his uniform, practically ripping his letters in half as he shoves them into Jimmy-G's hands and rasps out, "Send them, send them," before everything went black with pain and he woke up in the darkness.

"You can't fix your mistakes," Laura says, like she's saying something new and not something that makes him want to scream; "Once people are dead, you can't make them undead."**

Soda gets angry, gets loud; "Ya think I don't know that?" he snaps, "ya think I haven't wished that things weren't the way they are?…_Were_?" and the correction makes him wince. "You're just flappin' off 'bout these things and I ain't—I don't even know what's goin' on."

Laura looks at him for a long time, says, "You've been here longer than me, sweetheart," and the word comes out like a sneer. She said she died in, Christ, 2011, some thirty, forty years in the future. It's too far off for him to wrap his head around it.

"No," he says, "I ain't. I just woke up and walked around, and here ya are, waitin' for me."

She made a sound in her throat, rolling her eyes. It made her look younger, but it also highlighted the grotesque state of her clothes and body, all that red and dirt for ages. With a sudden jolt Soda looked down at himself, swallowing sharply when he saw he was still in his fatigues. They, too, are caked with dirt and grime, still damp around the legs from the weather. There's blood at his ribs, the material wet even though his fingers come away dry after pressing there. Everything's in order—except for the dog tags. He grasps at his neck, at his collar, but his neck is bare. Cold, too.

Her eyes are still on him, though, and she says, "My IDs are gone, if that explains anything." She shrugs, "Looks like anything they take from us is gone forever. Things that say who we are."

"My uniform makes me a soldier," Soda says, voice flatter than he means it to be, and she glances at him. The look in her eye is part-amused, part-wary. She looks like she's lived more wars than should be possible.

"Hm," she says to that, looking thoughtful. It's a fake-looking thoughtful, sure, but there's a gentler smile on her mouth than there had been before. The purple around her eyes is still strong, but the expression makes her features relax. Soda can't say she's a pretty one—he'd seen worse broads, like Sylvia, who for all the make up and diets couldn't hide away the nasty personality that followed her drinking, and he'd seen prettier ones, like that soc girl, Cherry. But there's just so much age in the face before him, and it leaches away what could have been beauty on her. She notices his gaze and raises both eyebrows, says, "You're not the first one here, you know. And you're not just a soldier, are you?" His answer is immediate.

"No."

She smiles, leaning forward; "I'm just a dead girl."

His muscles lock at the matter-of-fact tone she takes, and he shakes his head. "Ya can't be," he says, "what about your family?"

"Dead," she says, "or they might as well be."

Soda stares at her. She gives a self-deprecating smile. "My family was murdered six years ago," she says, "and what's left is either responsible, or murderers now, too. Peter can bite the dust for all I care." Her face is stony, a snarl forming on her face, and she continues, "Derek's the only one left and—it's too late." She settles back in her chair, crosses her arms over her chest. The spread of red has stopped, her clothes and skin oddly tinged orange in the flickering light above them. He feels a little like he's sitting in the police station again, except then he'd had Steve to shoot the shit with.

"What…" he starts, and then stops. The look on Laura's face is too severe for him to finish his question, and he quietly wonders what turned the girl into stone. She's got a steely look in her eye, a little bit like Dally had, but there's a softness underneath it all. Maybe the only one to ever see it was this Derek guy, because the other one—Peter—seemed to be dead in her eyes, too.

"My parents died when I was sixteen," Soda says instead, and Laura lets out a breath. She looks off into the darkness, says, "I can imagine," in response to a sentence he never said.

They sit in uncomfortable silence, Laura's mind no doubt a million miles away while all Soda can think of is nothing, that everything is over and done with.

"What about my brothers?" he finally says, and her eyes snap back to his. He finds no sympathy in them.

"Nothing," she says, "there's nothing left for you to do about anything." Soda bites his lip, tries not to scream.

"And us?" he says, "Do we just sit here forever?"

She lifts one shoulder, and red flakes off her skin; "Life is what you make of it, right? Shouldn't death be the same?"

"Fuck," he says, half-under his breath, and then louder, "_fuck_. I can't do this." He sets his elbows on the worn wooden table before them, cradles his head in his palms.

"There's nothing left to _do_," she says again, and then she gets up. "There isn't anything for anyone to do," she says, and it's quieter. There's resignation in her tone, now, and she continues, barely louder than a whisper, "Maybe there never _was_." Her gaze is far off.

"I never gave you my name," he says blankly, realizing she's about to leave, she's going to try and get out of wherever they are. A quell of panic bubbles up in him, and he says, "You can't just leave."

"Can't I?" she says, and looks behind her shoulder. Something in her face shifts, and it looks almost like the bruises are fading. Her head swings back to him, and this time her smile is more genuine. The expression on her face reminds Soda painfully of Johnny, and then she says, "I'll catch you on the _flip side_," like it's supposed to mean something. She already walking away by the time he manages to get to his feet. Again, he runs into the darkness, this time towards her instead of away, but she gets farther and farther away the faster he runs. Finally, she disappears into the blackness. He falls to his knees.

Next to him, the yellow light flickers. The air is still too clear to breathe.

.

.

.

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**Quote from Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," page 39.


End file.
